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Nightbane (boss)
Nightbane is a summonable boss in Karazhan. He is a skeletal dragon, transformed from Arcanagos and formerly of the Blue Dragonflight. While not the ruler of Karazhan, a position held by Prince Malchezaar, many consider Nightbane to be the true final boss of the tower, due to his superior difficulty. One member of your raid needs to complete the questline to summon the boss. This means Heroic Shattered Halls and Sethekk Halls must be partially completed in order to obtain the , which is used to summon Nightbane. History Nightbane was originally called Arcanagos and was sent by Malygos to warn Medivh and the surrounding population that something evil was happening in the area. When he attempted to remove Medivh with force, he met his match with the corrupted titan imbued wizard. Burning from a horrific spell from the inside out, Arcanagos crashed into the mountains of Deadwind Pass, dying a painful death, his bones scattering the surrounding area. It seemed however that Medivh formulated a spell to raise the bone dragon from the dead, and thus Nightbane was born. You are tasked with finally ending the former blue dragon's suffering by the Mages of the Violet Eye. Attacks and abilities Nightbane has two phases which he will transition between several times during the course of the fight. During the first phase, the boss is tanked on the ground in a style reminiscent of Onyxia. At 75%, 50%, and 25% health, he will enter phase two and take to the sky, during which time the raid's attention will be focused elsewhere. Abilities on the Ground: * Bellowing Roar - Typical dragon fear, cooldown 30 seconds. Resistible with Berserker Rage, Fear Ward, or Will of the Forsaken, Death Wish. He casts this once every 45 seconds to 1 minute. 2.5 second cast time, short duration fear. * Charred Earth - Chars the ground, dealing 21880 to 28120 damage to players in the inflamed area over 30 seconds, 10 yard radius. Similar to a fire-based Void Zone. * Cleave - Typical dragon cleave, frontal arc. Hits for approximately 6000 on plate, 11000 on cloth. * Distracting Ash - Reduces the range of spells and abilities by 50%. Can be dispelled. * Smoldering Breath - Inflicts 3700 to 4300 fire damage to enemies in a cone front of the boss. Deals 1688 to 1912 damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. * Tail Sweep - Inflicts 450 fire damage on enemies in a cone behind the boss, knocking them back. Deals 450 fire damage every 3 seconds for 25 seconds. Abilities in the Air: * Casts Rain of Bones on one random player/pet: ** Bombards the area the targeted person is standing with bone fragments which deal 352-408 physical damage in a 6 yard radius, and summons 5 Restless Skeletons (Bombardment no longer follows the player as the player moves, as of patch 2.1). ** Summoned Restless Skeletons each have the following attributes: *** Hit for approximately 1300 on cloth, 450 on plate *** Have roughly 13500 health * Shoots powerful Smoking Blast every second for approximately 15 seconds. Deals 1850 to 2150 physical damage (can be mitigated by armor, approximately 750 on plate) to the target and 3000 fire damage over 18 seconds. The fire damage over time debuff can be dispelled. Targeting for this ability is determined by the individual with the highest healing threat after he goes into the air. He resets healing threat at some point in the air, be it right as he goes up or when he "takes in a deep breath". The easiest way of dealing with this by casting Blessing of Salvation on squishy healers and having a Paladin chain cast heals with Righteous Fury active. * Fireball Barrage: If any member of the raid is too far away from Nightbane while he is flying he will start pelting members of the raid with fireballs, each doing about 3000-3500 damage, casting 1 per second until all members are within range. This is just an ability that exists to prevent exploiting and is not something you will notice if you do things correctly. Landing: * Watch your head. * Position your raid so that the tank can pick him up easily and a hunter can misdirect Nightbane onto the tank. Keep your healers and casters at max range for the landing. Overview * This is a long, healing intensive fight that can last upwards of 10 minutes. Many cooldowns (Innervate, Shadowfiend, etc.) may be used twice during this fight if timed correctly. * The most dangerous parts of this fight are the transitions between flying and ground phases, when the main tank must reestablish aggro. Hunters' Misdirection is especially useful here, to make sure the boss goes directly for the tank. * While he is on the ground, Nightbane's fear must be dealt with. The main tank must somehow avoid this though Fear Ward, Stance Dancing, etc. A shaman's Tremor Totem should be used if available. * A strategy should be chosen and used to deal with the skeleton adds during the flying phase: single-target DPS, AoE; anything that works. * Finally, Charred Earth must be avoided, as it ticks for around 2000 fire damage in an area. The visual effect can be difficult to spot at first, so you may need to watch for incoming damage and move as necessary. Strategy Note that only one tank is needed, but four healers is *strongly* suggested. The battlefield consists of a long, narrow terrace, bordered by a dome on one side and row of battlements on the other. Nightbane should be tanked midway down the terrace in such a place that there is a reasonable amount of space on either side of him. The tank should pick a visible landmark (a lone skull lying on the ground or smoke flare) and holds him there the entire fight. Splitting up the parties and sending Group 1 to the north side and Group 2 to the south side is a viable strategy. However, many groups see much better results keeping both groups on the same side, with Group 1 clustered next the dome and Group 2 clustered next to the battlements. In either case, healers and ranged should remain at max distance in order to avoid the fear. Healing in this phase isn't particularly difficult, and the fight resembles a simple tank and spank. However, Nightbane has a lot of burst potential when his melee is combined with his cleave and smoldering breath, so healers need to be somewhat awake, even though they can get outside the 5 second rule quite often. The tank should stance dance whenever the ground begins to shake in order to avoid the fear. Look for the Bellowing Roar cast bar right after the ground shakes, as the ground also shakes slightly before his breath attack. Fear Ward and Will of the Forsaken are viable alternatives, and deadly boss mod is highly recommended to make it easy to pick up the fear. It's usually recoverable for the tank to be feared once during the encounter, but anything more is often insufferable. With exception to the fear, the only ability which might prove problematic is the Charred Earth. Assuming Charred Earth appears underneath Group 1, Group 1 should briefly shift over to Group 2's position until the area is safe again, and vice-versa. Occasionally, both groups may fall victim to Charred Earth at the same time, and if this happens all healers and ranged must temporarily shift forward to remain in range of the tank and the boss. Consequently, both groups will be closer to the boss and vulnerable to the fear. The tank must be ready to take whatever preventative measures are necessary should the raid's healers suddenly find themselves incapacitated. Once Nightbane takes to the sky, all healers and ranged collapse to where the main tank is standing in order to avoid the Fireball Barrage. Once Rain of Bones starts, all players must immediately move away to avoid taking too much AoE damage. The tank should pick up all Skeletons, and they should be single target DPSed. An offtank can be used as main assist during the focus fire, and Blessings of Protection dispensed liberally to keep the cloth-wearing classes alive. Ten seconds before the boss lands, all members of the raid should fall back to the previous positions, dragging whatever skeletons are still alive with them. Ideally, all adds will be dead at this point, but having one or two still up before Nightbane descends is fine. The tank must remember to stance dance to avoid the initial fear. From this point on the strategy is repeated. DPS Nightbane down through two more transitions and the fight is won. Strategy for phase 2 Even if the paladin has improved righteous fury, his healing threat generation is only 0.5*1.9=0.95 vs the 0.7*0.8=0.56 threat (Priest or Druid with blessing of salvation, 0.595 for a Shaman) that the other healers will have. In general, it is fairly difficult for the paladin to compete with healing aggro for smoking blast against priests and shaman who have AoE heals. Instead, the Paladin should activate his DPS cooldowns from trinkets and avenging wrath and tank the 5 skeletons. Warlocks and mages can then begin AoE and down the skeletons much sooner than single target DPS allows. Get a Shaman with relatively high armor rating ( 7500 and above ) to spam chain heals to tank the smoking blast. The primary advantages of this strategy are that all skeletons are controlled in phase 2 and will not run about killing the healers, skeletons die much faster due to the AoE and all healers will be able to get the Blessing of Wisdom buff to help mana issues instead of the Blessing of Salvation buff. for tanking Nightbane with a Paladin Alliance paladins, same as before but with fear ward, horde paladins can still tank nightbane perfectly smoothly as long as the following modification is made: Everyone MUST stand in for the fears, but outside cleave distance. This means that when the fear hits everyone is feared, and nightbane will continue to attack the tank as he is highest on agro out of the feared targets. Sometimes he will go for a totem instead, but that doesn't really matter. Remove all fear resistance buffs from everyone bar the tank, Shadow resistance buff, Mark of the wild etc. Make sure you have one preferably two tremor totems down in the tanks group. This means that the fear will break quickly and reduces the risk of someone dying to an unlucky resist. If due to some unlucky charred earths people have to stand outside of the fear range, then you should use Blessing of Protection on yourself when nightbane starts casting his fear, it will prevent it from affecting you. Make a macro so hitting the key again removes it and be sure to remove it as soon as the fear casting finishes to keep nightbane on you. Save your PvP trinket and Bubble for breaking fears when someone resists if you can. For the air phase you can cast a HolyWrath to pick up all the adds, then AoE tank them will they are DPSed down. Make sure you get in position for nightbane landing in good time though, spamming exorcism on him so you pick him up as soon as he lands. If you follow this instructions nightbane can be tanked perfectly smoothly with no deaths as a horde paladin. Loot Patches and hotfixes External links Category:Skeletons Category:Dragons Arcanagos Category:Bosses Category:Instance:Karazhan